AusRobotics

I meant to mention the other day that I have finally fixed up the new site and it is now progressing well again (and displaying in all relevant browsers as far as I can see).

At one point I thought I might be able to complete dev on it by the Sunday just gone but I ran out of time due to some unexpected integration hiccups (I upgraded to Wordpress 2.6 which broke the forum integration again because they keep changing their cookie format).

If you get a spare second please check it out at: http://www.fatmode.com/ (One of my test domains :)

Please note that I am just about to reinstall Wordpress 2.5.1 to fix the integration issue so the site may be up and down and all over the place this week.

Also my web host has had some down and extremely slow time this week so if you have been having trouble reaching ausrobotics, that's the reason.

In robot news I went to hook up my xbees for some proper testing only to find that they have a different pin spacing from most of my stuff.... damn :)

W00t. My XBee modules arrived from Sparkfun today and man are they smaller than I was expecting.

For some reason I thought they would be about 5x6cm or so like my arduino but the units are only 3x2.5cm.

I also bought a USB adapter board for one of them to minimise the buggering around before I could set them up. I'm gonna plug it in now so I'll let you know how it goes!

• XBees at sparkfun.com
• Maxstream/Digi XBee platform

Ausrobotics v2 in Firefox 2.0.0.14

Ausrobotics v2 in Firefox 3.0

Wow. Did someone change the rendering back end for Firefox suddenly without telling me? I thought these things were supposed to be compatible? (Famous last words...)

(Damn, I could have sworn I published this on Thurs... Too many late nights.)

A quick Robo News tonight. Servo Mag has this special available for a(n unknown) limited time. What do you guys reckon?

• Should we enter our "Menagerie"?
  
• Do you we have a "Menagerie" yet?
  
• Should we "invent" a "Menagerie"? :)

SERVO Magazine - THE magazine for robotics - would like to extend a special offer to (Robot Club's Name). Our exclusive SERVO Six Pack offers your members the following benefits:

Whooooo!

Ok, just trying to fire everyone up there. Not sure if it worked or not but it was worth a shot :) Ok, here's the update!

Still trying to work out the v2 site issues. They seem to only manifest under FF2 and non XP OSs (correct me if I am wrong). I am sure it will be simple in the end but I haven't had too much time to work on it.

Does this guy ever sleep? (Do I for that matter?). Incessant inventor, CrabFu managed to bust out the PutterBot seemingly overnight. It's movements are awesome but like his other creations it is remote controlled, it would be great to remake this little guy and fully automate it.

Somebody did what I only threatened to and stuck the Wowee animatronic Chimp head onto a Roomba. I have no words for the result but if I did they would probably rhyme with 'Awesome' and 'Totally'.

Check it out: Ausrobotics v2 Beta (Preview Extreme Edition Plus!)

Please log in and have a look at the interface. All of your current credentials should work.

I would appreciate any feedback on whether you can post journal entries and to the forums successfully. Also if you see any blatant security holes let me know!

Off the top of my head, this is what is remaining:

1. Update the migration script to import existing forum posts (currently it imports forum posts as new blog posts) 
2. Fix up the url structure (Important for SEO!
3. Add some of the other pages if I get time
4. Stop procrastinating and cut the damn thing over

Also give me a yell in the comments if it doesn't work in your browser. Going off the stats for this site it should but if any of you particularly like using Netscape 1.2 then, well in that case you are out of luck but let me know anyway. :)

Hi guys, great to see all of the activity on the site over the last couple of weeks. It looks like some cool projects are in the pipeline!

This is just a quick heads up to let everyone know what is going down/up/around the place:

Ausrobotics v2

Still going... You can view it here for testing purposes. I am planning on using phpbb3 for the forums which should be a lot nicer than drupal's built in stuff. It doesn't work nicely in IE5.5 or 6.0 at the moment........... If those browsers would just die that would be great. 

Blog posts in moderation

I noticed a couple of posts in moderation and have pushed them to the front page. If your posts don't go straight to the front (they should be default now) then please leave a comment somewhere and I'll sort it out asap.

Well, I didn't manage to get the site finished or progress my bot anywhere but I did manage to relax so all in all I would count this as a successful long weekend.

This is what I should have been making of course... Next time!

What do you get when you take a Casio Exilim EX-F1 camera to Carolina's Combat Robotics event? A beautiful ballet of high speed mechanical mayhem that's what!

The EX-F1 can shoot video up to 1200fps even though it is a point and shoot which makes it perfect for catching every detail of the high speed destruction that characterises combat robotics.

More videos from the EX-F1 are available from MadOverlord's site.

Whooo! The Phoenix lander has successfully made it to the surface of Mars!

I watched the live feed at around 10am this morning. It was a great watch with all the NASA scientists on the edge of their seats hoping for the best.

It all turned out better than could be hoped in the end. Phoenix landed successfully (using retro rockets no less) and has already started transmitting back images from the surface. Great to see a probe make it intact for a change. :)

Check the links below for more info on the Phoenix mission.

Phoenix Mars Mission - Home

Phoenix Mars probe touches down